The Purple Heart Came Home to Main Street

I put the fixture back up. I did not trust my voice for a while. When the light came on and held steady, he said, “That’s better,” and went inside.

That night I sat in my truck in my own driveway and looked at the legal pad. Forty-one shops. Thirty-four noes, seven nobodies.

The man in Springfield who laughed at me had said one thing that stuck. Things move around. I thought about it. A loan in early September. If it was a thirty-day loan, it came due in early October. Then a shop gives you extra time, a grace period, before they can sell it.

Which meant that for most of the time I had been calling, the medal was not in anybody’s case. It was in somebody’s back room, on a shelf, in a bag with Jared’s name on the ticket. And a clerk at the front counter, asked if they had a Purple Heart, would look in the case and say no.

I started the list over on Friday.

This time I asked different questions. I asked if they had anything military that had come out of hold recently. I asked if they had anything with a name engraved on it. I called the seven who had not called back, and I called the thirty-four who had said no, one by one.

Friday was a long day. We finished the machine shed and Phil and I stood in the doorway and watched the lights come on, all forty of them in a row. It was a good feeling. Then I sat in the truck and called nine more shops and got nine more noes.

Monday, I had twenty-two shops left. I called eleven at lunch and eleven on my afternoon break. Thursday I called the last of them. Lonnie’s was on the second page, on Range Line Road in Joplin, one of the first places I had called back in October.

A man picked up on the fourth ring. He had a slow, deep voice, like he had all day.

“Lonnie’s,” he said.

I gave him my speech. Korean War. Purple Heart. Possibly in on a loan in early September. Possibly come out of hold.

He did not say anything for a second.

“Well, now,” he said. “Funny you’d ask. I’ve got one that came out of hold this week. Put it in the case Monday.”

I was standing in a half-gutted bathroom in Baxter Springs with a drill in my other hand. I set the drill down on the vanity. My hands had gone cold.

“Would you turn it over for me?” I said. “Is there a name on the back?”

“Hang on.”

I heard him set the phone down. I heard a case slide open. I heard him breathing when he picked the phone back up. Then he did not say anything for a long time.

“Walter J. Brandvold,” he read.

I sat down on the edge of the bathtub.

“Son?” Lonnie said. “You still there?”

“That’s my grandpa,” I said. “That’s my grandpa’s.”

“All right,” he said, kind of soft. “All right. I’m going to pull it out of the case and put it in the back for you. Can you come get it?”

“Saturday morning,” I said. “First thing.”

“I open at nine,” he said. “I’ll be here.”